The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist must give the federal Conservative government fits. Last December Geist was instrumental in organizing a group on FaceBook which challenged the governmentÕs proposed copyright legislation. At the time, the government backed off from their position and said they would not move the law forward until they had heard from Canadians. Since that time, the rumour that this legislation would be brought back in very short notice has come forward several times. But it never has. Now, the latest word from Ottawa is that this bill will be left to expire and die when the current session of parliament closes because the government faces another massive public backlash which they cannot afford in the current session. Copyright legislation absolutely needs to be reformed. The laws as they stand were written long before music downloading and file sharing took on the public movement they are today. But the Conservative government has been pushed by the U.S. into basically copying their very restrictive legislation, which would make even things like recording a television show on a personal video recorder, like a satellite may have, illegal. The Conservatives also want to turn border guards into the copyright police, giving them the right to look through all of your electronics, including your iPod, and confiscate any devices they feel have files on them which may have been gathered through file sharing software. So the next time you pass through customs, they may be interested in more than what you may have stashed away in your suitcase. Since all of these things reached the press, Geist organized a national campaign against the bill and the original FaceBook group, which reached 20,000 people during DecemberÕs push, has now hit over 40,000 members and includes artists such as The Barenaked Ladies, Sarah McLachlan and Avril Lavigne. The latest rumours circulating are that Industry Minister Jim Prentice will quietly let the bill die rather than face a firestorm of criticism over these reforms. Good news for Geist, but he continues to find out more about Prentice. Last week Geist released information that proves someone in PrenticeÕs office has been working on his Wikipedia entry. Alerted by a reader, Geist tracked back the IP address that is recorded each time an edit is made to any entry on Wikipedia, finding that it came from an Industry Canada office. These edits described Prentice as a potential future leader of the Conservative Party and spoke of the upcoming copyright legislation as fair and balanced to the needs of both producers and consumers. Industry Canada, of course, had no comment. Meanwhile, as the week continued on, Apple proved it is satisfied with CanadaÕs copyright laws, allowing iTunes users to begin downloading for either rent or purchase several thousand movies. Having allowed Canadians to pay for episodes of television shows in the fall, this now makes Canada the only nation outside of the U.S. to have movie downloads available. Almost all movies are available for rent at $4.99. The terms of rental are pretty simple. Once youÕve downloaded a movie, you have 30 days to begin watching it Ð more than reasonable. But once you begin viewing the file, you only have 24 hours to complete watching it. Once this time has expired, the file will simply no longer play. When you purchase a movie, it moves into your iTunes library and is synced to your iPod or other digital device automatically, allowing the movie to be watched in several places at the same time. But with a rental, the movie can only be synced to one device at a time. So if you want to watch the file on your iPod, it can no longer be viewed on your computer unless you remove it from your hard drive. A more restrictive form of digital rights management for certain. All of this is quite interesting. If the U.S. is so worried about CanadaÕs copyright laws, it makes me wonder why Apple, one of the worldÕs largest distributors of digital content, would open up movie rentals to us. Still something to watch, letÕs hope this copyright bill dies before it ever reaches the light of day. ([email protected]) Tech Notes runs Mondays.
